Holiday for Shoestrings

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Original Title
Blue Ribbon

Airdate:
23 February 1946 Blue Ribbon reissue: 15 September 1951

Series:

Merrie Melodies

MPAA Number:	Production Number:	Vitaphone Number:
9832	MM-7-14 1257 (reissue)	1378

Runtime:

7 minutes, 21 seconds

Copyright Renewed:

17 January 1973^[1]

Crew

Director:

I. Freleng

Written By:

Michael Maltese
Tedd Pierce

Producer:

Eddie Selzer (uncredited)

Film Editor:

Treg Brown (uncredited)

Musician:

Carl W. Stalling

Holiday for Shoestrings is a 1946 Merrie Melodies short directed by I. Freleng.

Title[]

The title is a pun on the popular instrumental tune "Holiday for Strings".

Plot[]

Shoemaker Jake is feeling ill and has advertised for help. A group of elves secretly come at night to repair the shoes for him, timed to the tune of Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker.

The bedridden shoemaker, suddenly feeling much better upon seeing the elves working feverishly, tries to sneak out to play golf. When the elves see this, they drag Jake back to bed, nail his blanket to the floor, and march out, one dragging the golf clubs out of the house for himself.

Caricatures[]

Availability[]

Streaming[]

Censorship[]

When this cartoon aired on Cartoon Network and Boomerang, a scene featuring two stereotypical East Indians was cut. Both edits seem odd, since there have been countless scenes featuring East Indian-looking snake charmers uncut in other shorts and the Porky Pig short "Porky in Egypt" had a scene of an Egyptian fakir who sat on a bed of nails and did a fire-eating stunt. This edit applies to the USA feeds only. Tooncast and overseas channels have these scenes uncut:

A fakir elf using the back of a shoe-sole as a bed of nails
A snake-charmer elf playing the pungi while the boot's shoelace rises like a charmed snake and laces itself neatly.

Notes[]

Many of the elves resemble Elmer Fudd with elf-like ears, anticipating a similar role played by Elmer ten years later in "Yankee Dood It". According to the ToonHeads episode, "Night of 1000 Elves", the elves resemble Elmer Fudd because director Friz Freleng disliked the character and did whatever he could to make fun of him.^[2]
One of the elves replaces the shoe stickers from 4F to 1A. Those "4F" and "1A" were military terms used during World War II to describe the person's capability in the army, where "4F" means unfit for military service. However those references become dated during the cartoon's release, as World War II had already ended.
The "Eat at Joe's" gag is recycled from Freleng's earlier "Lights Fantastic".